Our Product

The Complete Leaf Company proudly presents for the very first time Yerba Mate Buds. The product, derived solely from the buds of the plant, leaving the stems, branches, and mature leaves for conventional production, will be the first to offer a truly unique taste experience worth savoring. By applying an ancient Chinese processing technique to yerba, consumers will finally be able to skip the bitterness of crudely processed traditional yerba maté and enjoy the delicate and complex flavors of yerba maté at its best. Below is a close-up of the Yerba Mate Buds:



The Complete Leaf Company's Yerba Mate Buds will be truly and literally unique. It will be the first bud-derived yerba product, the first to have whole, unbroken leaves, the first handcrafted yerba product, and the first to come in pyramidal tea sachets. The comparison below (with Brazilian style Chimmarão on the right and Argentine style yerba maté on the left) clearly and powerfully demonstrates exactly how different Complete Leaf's product will be:


Upon steeping, the yerba buds revert back to their vibrant green color. The liquor is clear and greenish green, not opaque and yellowish brown like traditional maté. The smell and taste is similar to green tea but distinctly and uniquely 'yerba-y'. Below is a side by side comparison of Complete Leaf Yerba Mate Buds (left) alongside that of a competitor (right) offering traditional yerba maté:


Below is a photo of The Complete Leaf Company's Yerba Mate Buds in a mesh infuser brewing:


A comparison of Complete Leaf Yerba Mate Buds (right) alongside that of the competition before and after steeping the two:


A stem from the yerba plant alongside a cup with dry budset yerba in it:



That same cup after steeping. The delicate buds have soaked up the hot water, gently unfurled, and reverted to their original shape and color:



Lastly, a sight one will never find in any other yerba in the world, an unbroken delicate interior leaf from a yerba bud after steeping:


What follows in the next posts are descriptions and depictions of the products our competitors offer, our processing methods, traditional processing methods, our raw material, and finally the plant itself.

Our Raw Material

The first fragile yerba buds to emerge in the Spring. These tiny leaves and the growing meristem produce a beverage of delicate, complex, and sophisticated taste. The Complete Leaf Company intends to execute a complete paradigm shift in the cultivation, harvest, and production of yerba maté by focusing on these tiny tips of the plant:


A side view of the buds. Complete leaf will use the buds up to the first leaf that bends away from the axis of the stem:


The crown of a principal branch of the plant. Upon its second flush, the branch opens up into a crown of roughly fifty buds, all appropriate for harvest to make Budset Yerba:


Shown below is a simple contrast between the raw material of our competitors and that of Complete Leaf Budset Yerba. An important point, not clearly depicted below, is that material for conventional yerba includes branches up to the diameter of a thumb and leaves up to 12 inches long, whereas our buds will be no longer than an inch with between 7-10 tiny leaves packed into the bud:


The photograph below shows the stark contrast in color, texture, and, ultimately, in taste between the mature leaves of the plant and the growing bud:


Another shot of an emerging bud in the late Spring:


The following photo, taken in early Spring demonstrates a classic characteristic of tropical plants, the reddish color upon sprouting that signifies that the tender buds have yet to produce chlorophyll:


A view from above a bud showing the tight concentric circles of new leaf formation:


Bringing to yerba a strict regimen of classification will enable the production of a beverage of such quality as to be able to compete successfully with green tea. University studies in Brazil show that the points of the branches, the buds, produce a beverage much smoother and less bitter than products derived from branches and old leathery leaves.

Their Production

The yerba tree below will yield about 7 kilograms of leaves, branches, and stems. Rip all of that off of that plant and about 1,000 others, and the raw material is ready to be transported to the factory:


After leaving the field, the life of the yerba begins anew in the factory. Factories tend to have a processing capacity anywhere between 5,000 and 20,000 kilograms per day and are highly mechanized. The Complete Leaf Budset Yerba will be processed by hand, producing around 200 kilograms a day, ensuring the most care in crafting the highest quality product.


The leaf is first elevated and drops into the smoky maw of the sapecador, a rotating metal drum with an intense fire on the entry side of the tube:


The leaf passes through the smoke and is flash-fired, reducing the water content of the leaf by around half:


A view of the leaf's entry into the rotating drum:


A view into the tube from the exit side. The leaf is lifted and bruised as it passes through the slightly inclined drum exiting after around 5 minutes:


The leaf is then lifted onto the Barbacua, a wooden structure under which a conduit leads to another large fire. The leaf is essentially smoked for 24 hours as its water content is reduced to near zero:


Upon exiting the Barbacua, the leaf is coarsely ground and left in a warehouse to age for at least a year (although Brazilians prefer their yerba to be fresh, foregoing the aging process). After one to two years the yerba is taken out of the warehouse and finely ground producing the final product that is shown below and is utilized by virtually all yerba purveyors.


The paradox of the yerba industy is that a ¢60 per kilo industrialized product is often sold as a traditional hand-crafted product for upwards of $30 per kilo. The Complete Leaf Company will provide a product that lives up to such high expectations and price points.

The Plant

Yerba Maté goes by many names, erva mate, Ilex Paraguariensis, Ka'a, all depending on who one asks (Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Guaraní, respectively). The tree only grows in one environment in the world with exactly zero successful commercial plantations outside of its habitat: the Paraná-Paraguay river system watershed:


Yerba is a member of the holly family, aquifoliaceae, and is found in the secondary canopy of the Atlantic Rainforest, a jungle that once covered much of eastern South America. Growing up to 15 meters, below is a photo of a wild yerba tree in its virgin habitat (the yerba is in the very center of the picture):


A wild female plant in bloom in the Spring:


When cultivated, the tree takes on the appearance of a bush more than a tree. In commercial plantations in Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, the plant density is usually 1000-2000 trees per hectare. Below is an example of a domesticated yerba plant, when harvested it will yield between five and ten kilograms of material for harvest:


Traditionally, the harvest includes stripping the tree of all its branches, leaves, stems and buds. This crude raw material is trucked to the factory and processed using a method created by the Spanish Jesuits in the 17th Century. The product of ten trees would look very similar to this:


Below is what we at Complete Leaf Company believe the product of 10 plants should look like: